


Firsts

by vinegardog



Category: Farscape
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Gen, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 16:31:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinegardog/pseuds/vinegardog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is feeling blue and Aeryn finds a way to cheer him up</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firsts

Setting and Spoilers: Set in early to mid S1 before The Flax. No spoilers.

Rated PG-13 for some mild bad Earth language and some adult musings.

Characters are not mine. I cherish them, although I wish I did them more justice.

Word Count: 4846

Thanks to A Damned Scientist yet again for the betaing and for his great suggestions and the much needed polishing. All errors, as always, are mine and only mine. 

Firsts (PG-13)

Aeryn had been looking for Crichton for the best part of half an arn. 

When he hadn’t turned up for third meal, bounding into centre chamber in that loose-limbed, graceful and enthusiastic way of his, the crew of Moya had commed him repeatedly but to no avail. They soon had come to one of two conclusions. Either his comms were not working and he had lost all sense of time while concentrating on some undertaking or other that they would probably not comprehend even if they had had enough interest to ask about it or the Human had finally got himself badly hurt or killed. In the case of the latter, most likely in a manner even more inane and preposterous than any of them had been able to imagine since his arrival on Moya.

“I bet he is dead! I just hope his carcass is not jammed somewhere in an air duct close to my sleeping quarters or, in a couple of solar days, the foul smell will affect my much needed sleep!” Rygel had commented while leisurely stuffing his face with the food from the plate Zhaan had laid out for Crichton.

“I could dispatch some of the DRDs to look for him…” Pilot had volunteered from the clamshell before being rudely interrupted by D’Argo.

“We are not his keepers! He can look after himself and if he can’t, that’s his own problem, not ours! I am certainly not going to lose any appetite over him.” The Luxan had growled before turning his attention back to his meal, the matter closed as far as he was concerned.

“John could have gotten lost on one of Moya’s less frequented tiers. I know he often tries our patience, D’Argo, but I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt and search for him. He could be hurt and in serious need of assistance. He is our shipmate after all.” Zhaan had interjected in that cool, placating and yet quite commanding voice of hers that was hard to ignore.

While the others had continued the debate as to whether a proper wide-spread search of Moya for the hapless Human was warranted at this stage, Aeryn had quietly stood up and, unnoticed, had slipped out of centre chamber. 

Aeryn felt… uneasy? Worried? Anxious? She found it hard to put a clear name to how she felt and certainly had no wish to explore in any depth her feelings about either Crichton in general or the fact that he had been missing and out of communication now for a disturbingly long length of time. She certainly would not have admitted her disquiet to any of the others, not when she was not even prepared to admit it openly and honestly to herself!

The Human was annoying, never stopped talking, hardly ever made sense to her and yet the fact that he seemed to be always keen for her company, always eager to share his stories with her and have her do the same with him made her feel... feel sort of… frell did she know how it made her feel! Like she had never felt before, that was how! Why this intense, strange creature was so bent on learning about her past experiences – about her feelings while living them - she was sure that she would never understand were she to live to the ripe old age of five hundred cycles! Nobody, ever before, in her entire life had been so determined to probe her innermost thoughts and mental states as this bright eyed, useless, stubborn, hopelessly positive and annoyingly hopeful alien from the eema end of the galaxy. At a very large push she had to admit that it was all part of his irritating, inexplicable… charm. Was she really going to use that term to describe Crichton and his foibles? Aeryn shook her head in disbelief at her own choice of word. 

For weekens, at the beginning of their time living together on Moya, she had given him her best efforts at being dismissive, sarcastic, downright insulting. She had employed every single trick in her repertoire to distance herself from him and yet, even if at times she knew she had pushed him almost to his limits, he would always surprise her by quickly regrouping, somehow finding it in himself to forgive her abruptness and coming back for more. Always with that maddeningly disarming grin on his face. Always in that accepting, tolerant, chatty way of his that made her want to shake him, hit him – by Cholak – even frell him into silence if that was the only way! 

He was unsettling, attractive, disconcerting, arousing… and so much for irreversible contamination but when she didn’t want to kill him, she just wanted to slam him to the ground and frell him senseless! Which, to say the least, made her feel unnerved. And being unnerved was not something Aeryn Sun - proud Sebacean and Peacekeeper - enjoyed or had experienced often before. John Crichton – ignorant, clueless, inferior Human - had the almost supernatural power to make her feel like a green, clumsy cadet on a first flying mission every time he smiled his goofy smile in her direction or focused those clear, honest, soulful eyes on her, stripping her of all her hard built defences in the span of a microt.

Aeryn Sun knew she had no choice. She had to find him and make sure he was alright: the frelling Human had her positively fretting over him and she’d be frelled if she was going to admit it to him or anybody else, but she was not going to rest until she found the frelling nuisance!

After checking the main cargo bay to make sure that he had not taken off in that flying bucket of dren he so absurdly cherished, she proceeded to search all of the other places that had become his favourite haunts on Moya. As the search brought failure after failure, Aeryn’s unease started morphing into proper dread. With every passing microt a touch more desperation and panic made her hurry aimlessly from place to place without method or plan. After realising that she had now wasted time by checking in vain the med bay twice, she finally willed herself to stop this frantic, directionless search. She took a long breath and forced herself to recollect what had been drilled into her by every flight instructor in her early youth – panic kills, a cool head saves lives. 

Having found her focus, she turned her mind to evoking every single, insignificant detail from the many conversations she had shared with the Human – anything that might help her pinpoint his location. Her tried and tested Peacekeeper training methods kicked in and in a sudden moment of clarity and inspiration she thought of cargo bay seven on tier 25. This was one of the smallest cargo areas of Moya, mostly used for storage of pod parts by the Peacekeepers during Moya’s captivity and now pretty much out of commission. It contained nothing of importance and had no attractive features of any kind but Aeryn suddenly remembered Crichton once commenting in passing, during one of his endless ecstatic rants about the wonders of finding himself on a living, breathing ship, that this particular area reminded him vaguely in size and ambience of his work hangar at his science facility on Erp. He had to be there. He just had to! Aeryn thought as she took off at a run, heart pounding in her chest.

________________________________________________

John was sitting on the ground surrounded by disassembled pieces of biomechanoid spare parts. 

As he had hoped it might, putting his mind and hands to work on some unknown mechanical conundrum that would take his brain a certain amount of time and effort to solve had made him feel marginally better. 

He knew his foul mood was irrational, he also knew that taking it out on the others was surly and childish but all this crystal clear self-awareness was utterly wasted on him at the moment.  
Uncharacteristically, John Crichton was sulking and feeling enormously sorry for himself. And he was making a magnificent job of it. 

For the last three quarters of an hour – arn – he mentally corrected himself, he had listened to the others trying to contact him by comm, first calling him to dinner – third meal - again he corrected himself, then enquiring with increasing degrees of worry and impatience whether he was okay and demanding that he let them know where he was. He had intentionally ignored every single appeal.

The last thing he needed was to be at best teased and at worst ridiculed for one or another of his multitudinous alleged shortcomings, which ranged from being unable to operate the most basic of mechanisms around the ship to failing miserably to put together an edible meal when on mess duty. Hell, he knew he was an intelligent man. Back on Earth he was respected, even admired, by his peers for his many academic achievements. He was a scientist for fu.. – frell – ‘s sake! But here, now, among these aliens, all that meant zero, zilch, diddly squat. He was treated on a daily basis as the class dunce, the slow child to be pitied – mainly by Zhaan – and laughed at – mainly by all the others. It was getting old and John Crichton was quickly reaching the limits of human forbearance. Let them worry - he thought mutinously - today this chump was on strike! Oh he knew he would pay for it later, no doubt ‘bout that! But for the moment blessed solitude and wallowing in self-pity was all he could face.

What irked him the most was that he couldn’t have been more willing to learn, to help out and really become a contributing member of Moya’s motley crew. The problem was that nobody ever took the time to explain things to him unless he begged or wheedled to within an inch of his life. Fu.. – frell – them! Frell D’Argo and Rygel and their hostile, snooty, dismissive, offensive ways! And frell Aeryn too! 

Frell Aeryn… now that was a thought to roll around his mind! Frell Aeryn… mmm… God but he would jump at the chance every day of the week and twice on Sunday if she only gave him the smallest hint that she felt anything other than impatience and barely concealed spite for him! A couple of times in the past, during one of their regular body to body training combat sessions, just before she would flatten him to the mat or bring him to his knees in pain, he thought he might have glimpsed the smallest and most fleeting spark of… could it possibly be desire?... in her eyes. Nah! Who was he kidding? The woman thought he was inferior, deficient, somebody barely worthy of her training time and then only on the off chance he might one day make himself remotely useful if they were ever caught in another Tavloid situation. So, yeah, the type of frelling he more and more often found himself fantasising about with her could safely remain in the realm of his dreams. 

With self-pity, anger and not a small amount of unrequited lust fighting a noisy but even battle in his head, John failed to hear the light running steps that suddenly came to a halt just outside the portal to his hide-away refuge.

Aeryn’s low, smoky, incredibly stirring voice jolted him out of his brooding making him jump in surprise. 

“Are your comms malfunctioning, Crichton?” She asked him in a carefully controlled tone of voice, staring at his back since he stubbornly refused to turn around and acknowledge her presence.

“Nope!” He briefly replied, contrasting feelings waging battle around in his chest. On the one hand he felt pleased to see that she had made the effort to come find him but, on the other, he felt annoyed at himself for caring about it. 

“We called you several times for third meal...” She continued in the same even tone.

“Not hungry.” He interrupted her.

Aeryn paused for a beat to give herself time for a calming breath. The Human could be so frelling infuriating when he put his mind to it! She literally had to restrain herself from hitting him out of this absurd sulk of his. Absurd and pretty out of character, she had to admit. With a frown, she continued staring at his slightly hunched over back. 

A blind person could have seen that there was something seriously bothering him and in spite of the flash of annoyance she had experienced at his curt reply, she surprised herself by realising that she really did want to know what was upsetting him. She even wanted to help, if at all in her power. Frelling Human!

“Well, next time you should reply. It’s rude to ignore your crewmates’ hails.” She chastised him. She then surprised him by slowly approaching and stopping right behind him instead of walking away at his stubborn harshness as he had expected her to do.

Caught a little off balance by her perseverance, but determined not to make it easy on her, he snorted derisively:

“So, I am the rude one on this ship! Twilight Zone alert! Aeryn, is that really the twisted way you see it?”

“Crichton, you need to understand that…” she tried to reason but was cut short.

“I’m not in the mood for one of your ball-bustings, Aeryn, just go away!” John snapped. 

Sitting down, back turned to her, he knew he was clearly in a very vulnerable position. He felt the hair at the nape of his neck stand up while his body tensed up readying itself for what he was pretty sure was going to be a swift but extremely painful blow in retribution for his telling her to go away. Not that his standing up facing her would have made that much of a difference. Had he been ready in his best fighting stance, she still would have whooped his ass. At least, this way, he wouldn’t see it coming. He closed his eyes and waited for the pain.

However she again surprised him when she simply said: “Crichton, there is obviously something bothering you...”

“No shit, Sherlock!” He muttered under his breath.

“… Maybe if you talked about it …” Aeryn continued ignoring his incomprehensible interruption.

John sharply turned around and looked up at her: “Very funny, Aeryn! We all know what a great believer in talking and sharing you are. I’m not in the mood for being mocked either!” 

Surprising him for a third time in a row – an unprecedented record! - Aeryn lifted her hands, palms splayed outwards in that peculiar, placating gesture of surrender and conciliation she had seen him make so many times in the last few monens when faced by D’Argo’s rage or her own verbal attacks.

“I am not mocking you. What’s wrong, John?”

John? Did she really just call him by his first name instead of Crichton? John thought with no small degree of wonder.

“Nothing! Everything ‘s all fine and dandy!” He said, the uttered words contradicted by his averted eyes and his forceful jamming of a screwdriver-like tool into the power coupling he held in his other hand. 

Suddenly sparks erupted from the mishandled engine part and an electrical discharge travelled from his hand all the way through his arm, his back and right to the bottom of his spine.

“Crap!” John jumped, dropped the offending object at the sudden jolt and then shook his hand in the air trying to get some of the sting out of it.

Aeryn swiftly knelt down beside him, took his injured hand, brought it closer to her eyes for inspection and with the tip of her fingers gently rubbed his pads to make sure that no serious burns had occurred.

Almost hypnotised by the tenderness of her examination, John could not help but stare in fascination at Aeryn Sun, ex Peacekeeper and poster girl for Frontal Assault, who seemed to be currently intent on taking care of him. Little shivers of pleasure replaced the pain and ran through him at her touch. At that moment, if somebody had reminded him that he was meant to be sulking and suggested that he should pull away his hand, he would have dismissed them as totally bonkers. Instead, he willed her to bring his fingers to her wide, sensual mouth to suck them better but, really, what were the chances of that ever happening in his lifetime?

Satisfied that no permanent damage had been done, Aeryn finally released him but instead of moving away, she shifted her body from a kneeling to a sitting position right beside him - legs crossed, elbows propped on her knees, chin propped on her hands. 

“You’ll live.” She joked with a little grin referring to his hand and then quietly probed again: “So are you going to tell me what’s really wrong with you?” 

John Crichton had no chance in hell of resisting this mystifying woman, so he finally gave up the fight and capitulated. Because, c’mon, what else can a poor, red-blooded bastard do when faced by the full power of Aeryn Sun’s persuasion?

“You are gonna think it’s stupid…” he grumbled.

“Well, try me! It can’t be more stupid than most things you come out with…” Her words were insulting but she softened them and neutralised their bite by accompanying them with one of the most breath-taking smiles John had ever been blinded by. “Or do.” She nodded at the abandoned tool and coupling.

After a last ditch effort at holding back, the dam finally broke: “By my calculations, today is the 23rd of December, the eve of Christmas Eve back on Earth… and… and… that’s it!” He said and then looked up to take in her reaction.

Aeryn frowned but said nothing, expecting him to continue in his explanations.

“In two days’ time, it’s gonna be Christmas, Aeryn! Christmas! And here I am stuck on this ship, God only knows how many gazillions of light-years away from my home, my family, my life-long friends and not a clue how to get back to them!” How could she not see that that was enough to put Mother Theresa into the foulest of funks? 

As if on cue, Aeryn asked: “ And… ?

“Oh forget it! There’s no way you can understand!” John snapped, exasperated.

“Well, then explain it to me, John! What is Kritmas and why does being away on this particular occasion upset you more than on other days? I really want to understand…”

Maybe for the first time since he had met her, she looked genuinely interested in something concerning him, something from his past. Miracles never cease, he thought.

“I dunno… Christmas is special I guess. It’s a time of the year – cycle - you spend with family.” The thought that Aeryn didn’t have any family as such suddenly hit him, so he swiftly moved on. “You know… people decorate their houses with special ornaments…” Aeryn had never really lived in a house either – how was he going to explain this to her? “They… they put a tree in their sitting rooms and cover it with shiny baubles and streamers and… and… they stick a star on top of it…” Shit, but it all sounded so damn ridiculous when described like this to somebody with no terms of reference in their own life!

Aeryn was looking at him with a slightly confused frown: “You mean, they take a tree from outside and bring it indoors? Only to cover it with… with things? Why do they do that?” She asked.

That’s a good question, John thought, why the hell do we do that again?

“They do it so that they can place presents under it and… and… make it look festive, I guess…” He had never felt so inarticulate in his entire life!

“Presents?” 

“Yeah, presents. You know, like when it’s your birthday, only at Christmas it’s like it’s everybody’s birthday! Everybody gets a present from everybody else…”

Aeryn didn’t seem to grasp that concept very well either, the reason for which became clearer to John when she explained after a brief pause to gather her thoughts: “We don’t celebrate birthdays. Of course we know how old we are in cycles but carrier-born Peacekeepers like me are never told the exact date and time of their birth.” Aeryn took in John’s furrowed brow and continued to explain: “I guess it is mainly to make it impossible for us to know from which precise reproductive rotation we resulted. Which also precludes any chance of us finding out who our real sires are. That of course in the unlikely event that any of us was ever interested in trying to find out.”

All John could do was gape at her, speechless for once. Of course he had known they were from vastly different worlds, but it was only really starting to sink in with him just how different their backgrounds were. And it made him so damn grateful for his own life and so damn sad for hers. Things like a simple gift, things he had always taken for granted since he could walk and talk were alien concepts to Aeryn. What had her childhood been like? Did that mean that nobody, ever, had actually given her a present? That she had never felt the joy of giving one to somebody else?

Oblivious to his train of thought, Aeryn tried to recap: “So, what is upsetting you is that in two solar days’ time, you will not be getting any of these… these presents? Is that it?”

“No! No, no, no! Aeryn, it’s not the present in itself, you know! It’s what it represents. It means that somebody cares for you enough to put some thought into what they think you might like to receive. They think about it and they get it for you mainly because they want to see your pleasure when you open it. It’s the love and care that goes into it... You know, the giving of the gift is often way more satisfying than the receiving of it…”

How was he going to explain to her what most Humans took for granted?

“I dunno, Aeryn.” He continued. “I guess I’m homesick. And knowing that in two days’ time my family will be getting together in my father’s house and that I’m not gonna be there for the first time in my life just…” His words trailed away. He missed them all so damn much! The homesickness felt like an iron fist clamped around his throat, making it hard for him to breathe. The guilt of knowing that his disappearance would make for a pretty sad Christmas for his father and sisters also gnawed at him. What had been an empty place at the family table after his mother’s death was now going to be two empty places and he couldn’t even imagine the agony that would bring them.

“Anyway, forget about it! Thanks for listening. And you know what? It did help a little talking about it, Aeryn. So… thanks.”

Aeryn chose not to comment on the fact that he did not look a whole lot more cheerful than before. 

She didn’t really have direct knowledge of most of what he had explained to her but the concept of being homesick she understood, oh, she understood it only too well. Unlike him, she knew where her home was, how to return to it. The fact that she was not longer welcome there, made the pain only more bitter and raw. 

Trying to lighten the mood she joked: “You know, there is a very remote chance Rygel didn’t eat all of your food… want to go check it out?” She stood up in one long, fluid movement and offered her hand to him.

“Yeah, thanks, I guess I could eat something…” He grasped her forearm and let her help him up. 

When she started walking away, he huskily called after her: “Hey, Aeryn? I mean it! Thanks!”

When she turned back towards him to nod her acceptance of his thanks, she was pleased to see that that goofy grin of his was back to light up his face. 

__________________________________________________

John had spent the day getting through his chores, making mistakes, being reprimanded for them and correcting them as best he could. He had smiled, chatted, put up a good front with the others all the while pretending to himself that he had not constantly been thinking of the same thing over and over again: today was Christmas day back on Earth. 

He just wanted this day to be over. 

He wanted to stop imagining and obsessing over the scenes likely to be unfolding in his father’s house at that very moment. He could almost smell the roasting turkey, the cinnamon and gingerbread cookies, the wood burning in the fireplace and the pine resin from the Christmas tree. He could visualise the colours, the lights, the shimmering wrapping papers of the presents. He could almost hear the tacky Christmas jingles blaring out from his father’s old fashioned LP player and the carollers making the rounds of the neighbourhood houses. Almost taste the rich stuffing and the nauseatingly gooey egg-nogg .

Please let this day be over, he prayed while wearily rubbing his face on his way back to his quarters.

He finally got there, entered, activated the lights and pressed the command to close the two half doors behind him. He was going to take a shower, lie down on his hard, alien bed and hope against hope that blessed, oblivious sleep would take him into tomorrow.

He took off his IASA jacket and folded it on a chair. He then sat on his bed to unlace his boots before kicking them off but stopped in his tracks when, with the corner of his eye, he spotted something lumpy sitting on the centre of his mattress. He straightened up and took a better look at it. It seemed to be a dirty old cloth wrapped around… something. 

He tentatively reached for it fervently hoping that this was not some sort of horrible practical joke being played on him by Rygel. Please, please, don’t let it be a dead critter… or, worse, a live one! He prayed. After a deep, steadying breath, he finally grabbed two opposite corners of the cloth and swiftly pulled them open.

It was a pulse pistol. No, not just a pulse pistol, it was Aeryn’s pulse pistol. No, not just Aeryn’s pulse pistol, it was Aeryn’s FAVORITE pulse pistol. The one with her indecipherable Sebacean initials etched on the inside of the hand grip. The one she hardly ever parted with. 

At the thought of Aeryn sneaking into his quarters to leave her offering, John Crichton’s chest filled with a warm glow and his throat constricted. He wasn’t sure what choked him the most: the thought that she had gone out of her way to surprise him or that, by her doing so, John had actually been able to allow her to experience something new and good for the first time. A slow smile lit up his handsome face. Imagine that! John Crichton giving Aeryn Sun a first. OK, maybe this wasn’t exactly the type of first of his recent dreams but still, a first was a first! 

She had thought of somebody else’s needs and wants, she had thought of him, of what he might like, of what might make him feel a little better and she had gifted him something that meant a lot to her. A pulse pistol was not exactly at the top of his wish list but it was the thought that counted! 

Even though she was not there to see his pleasure, he hoped that she had enjoyed imagining his reaction and that the experience of giving had left her feeling satisfied. There was no way he was going to ask her about it because he was pretty sure she would knock him out cold on his ass if he had… but hell, yeah! Today had turned out to be not such a bad day after all!

Still smiling and gently turning Aeryn Sun’s favourite weapon in his hands admiring its sleek lines and sharp angles, John continued sitting on his bed soaking up the moment. His eyes swept around his quarters and, just as if by some sort of Christmas magic, or maybe just because of the emotional, unshed tears filling his eyes, the torn and dirty rag Aeryn had used as makeshift cover for her present to him morphed into a festive, shiny wrapping paper and the blinking eye-stalks of the DRDs peeking in from Moya’s corridor into twinkling, enchanted fairy lights.

On this Christmas night, John Crichton, astronaut, lost on the far side of the butt end of the galaxy, missed his family and friends but, somehow, just a smidgeon less achingly than he had half an hour ago.

The end


End file.
